The globally prescribed social distancing measure is still envisaged as the prime option for all nations to curb the spread of novel coronavirus. The level of maintaining of the social distancing by people of any state or region around the world varies with its overall social, political, economic and religious conditions. While it was earlier predicted that South Asia, a highly populated region comprising one quarter of world’s total population, might be the next hotspot for the fast-spreading disease, COVID-19, it is now a sheer reality. According to the data-accumulative website Worldometer, as of 29 July 2020, the soaring rate of infected cases in the entire region has surpassed the 2 million mark. This article aims to dissect the role of religions (Islam and Hinduism) for ineffective social distancing in top three infected countries of South Asia ─ India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Renowned historian Duane J. Osheim in his article entitled “Religion and Epidemic Disease” argued that “The religious response to epidemic disease may best be seen as a frame, a constantly shifting frame, subtly influencing illness and human responses to it”. This is enormously relevant in the context of South Asia because religious norms and values play a crucial role in shaping the mindsets and cognition of South Asians from their childhood.
The authoritative hold of clergy over normative narratives also makes it difficult for the laity to shun the former’s gluing influence. People of South Asian countries including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are significantly vulnerable to be trapped in the propaganda and manipulation of clerics. Thus, outlandish divine conspiracy theories and ideas over the ongoing pandemic have gripped people, making social distancing a trifling norm. The reason of many of our proclivity to seek the protection of God or to be enticed with false, irrational claims of clergy during a sinister time is rooted in the thinking of comfort with an illusional safety to relieve fear.
A vast number of Islamic scholars of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India, initially made Muslims believe that coronavirus is a divine retribution on China for repressing Uyghur Muslims. They further claim that the West has comparatively suffered most from coronavirus from the beginning for immoral practices such as homosexuality and alcoholism directly prohibited in Islam. When the virus spread in Muslim countries, the remarks of such religious scholars turned into a trickier shape. Accordingly, the virus spread in Iran since it practices the distorted version of Islam and it has infected other Muslims countries’ selected people because they are not holier enough to be saved.
Apart from this, Olama League (OL) an Islamic organization supportive to the Awami League, currently the ruling political party of Bangladesh, has recently proclaimed that coronavirus is not a contagious disease. The OL leaders have argued that in Islamic lens the pandemic is such a fatal situation where at least 20,000 people pass away but in Bangladesh only 30 to 40 people die of the virus in daily estimation. To many Islamic scholars and mosque Imams of Pakistan and Bangladesh, the imposition of ban and social distancing measure on daily prayers in mosques is nothing but an “infidel doctrine”. It indicates they consider any intervention in the place of religious worship as an attack to the Islamic faith.
Many adherents of India’s Hinduism have made its picture more complex. They are worshiping coronavirus as a devi (goddess) to obtain hard immunity. In Indian history, several goddesses such as “cholera goddess” for cholera outbreak, and “goddess Sitala” for smallpox pandemic were also offered prayers by Hindus to fight off the fatal diseases.
Many Hindu leaders of India have propagated numerous tricky ideas and statements over the pandemic. Swami Chakrapani, the president of the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha (All India Hindu Union), asserted that the coronavirus is an avatar having arrived in the mundane world to punish those maintaining non-vegetarian diet. This remark has binary connotations: on Hindus who are not vegetarian and on the other religious groups particularly Muslims (not Buddhists) who have not religious recommendation to be vegetarian. The statement is also purposefully analogous with all the three states’ Islamic clerics on who will actually be infected by the virus. In March, Chakrapani and some Hindu nationalist leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the present ruling party of India, arranged a cow urine-drinking party and urged Hindus to take bath in cow dung to ward off the virus. These groundless assertions hold not only excessive religious pride of Hinduism but political objective of the BJP to accelerate its Hindu nationalist project.
Due to the unchecked flow of absurd ideas of clergy and religio-political demagogues, blind faith having been harshly criticized by prominent atheist pundits such as Richard Dawkin and Christopher Hitchens has arguably become ingrained among the laity of these nations.
It now appears that a significant number of people are immensely prioritizing religion for their own health and safety due to the pandemic’s fear. Consequently, several religiously motivated anti-social distancing incidents have come out in the countries amid an avalanche of infected cases: particularly an International conference for Muslims by Tablighi Jamaat, Kerala’s Hindu temple procession, and Karnataka’s Siddhalingeswara temple chariot festival in India; Lahore religious gathering in Pakistan; mass Islamic prayer for heavenly protection against the scourge of virus, and massive gathering for the funeral of an Islamic cleric in Bangladesh. Moreover, majority of the people of the countries go to sacred places for daily prayers without maintaining proper social distancing.
The increasing sway of religion in political domain of these countries at this critical time mainly hints the dwindling space of secularism. This usually results from strategic attachment of religion with politics by political parties or government regimes and religious groups for their own interests. Nonetheless, since people of the subcontinent have a strong religious sentiment, clergy is wielding more influence than the government or medical experts on the psychology and activities of people during the pandemic.
Furthermore, what sort of misleading narratives or ideas Muslim and Hindu clerics or leaders have presented is adequate to insert a derogatory sense among the respective religious adherents to the other. In India, following the conference of Tablighi Jamaat responsible for spreading the virus, many Hindus with a hashtag “#Corona Jihad” in social media has triggered anti-Muslim mudslinging that turned into acute religious hatred and communal violence against Muslim minority. Likewise, the rickety structure of communal harmony between Muslims and religious minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh might further deteriorate because of the excessive pride of the so-called clergy on Islam and their wrong messages to its followers.
Religion is a blessing to humanity but when it is contaminated with false and deceptive narratives and ideas as in the case of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh amid the ongoing pandemic, it loses that worthwhile character. Though like religion the medically prescribed social distancing norm intervenes in almost all spheres of human beings, the two have clearly appeared antagonistic against each other, intensifying anti-social distancing activities in the countries.
The consequences of the pandemic being religiocised with political flavor are sharply evident in India over simmering tension between Hindu and Muslims and over some of Hindu political voices hinting at discrimination against the latter religious group. If this continues, we will likely observe its domino effect with nearly equal results in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Civil society has to come into the frontline to prevent the religiocisation of the pandemic, which would encourage political parties to fuse religion with politics for their narrow interests hampering democratic values and promoting communal trouble.
Islam and Hinduism have glorious instructions to prevent pandemic, which should be harped on. The Prophet Muhammad suggested Muslims: “If you hear of an outbreak of plague in a land, do not enter it; if the plague breaks out in a place while you are in it, do not leave that place”. Besides, the oldest texts (Vedas) of Hinduism teach Hindus to maintain social distancing and hygienic lifestyle in the time of any disease outbreak. Appropriate religious views on the pandemic have to be promulgated as a counter-narrative against the misleading clerics and leaders’ perfidious statements and they should be countered with legal decrees. Otherwise, religion will probably be acting as an impediment against the scientific prescriptions including future vaccination to prevent the spread of COVID-19, like polio, in the region. Thwarting polio vaccination campaigns in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria (two of whom are South Asians), religious myths and taboos have barred only these countries throughout the globe to be free from the poliovirus.
About the Author: Shuva Das holds a BSS (Hons) degree in International Relations from Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Science and Technology University in Gopalganj, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is an Executive Editor of Voice of International Affairs. His articles have appeared in Synergy: The Journal of Contemporary Asian Studies, The Oxford University Politics Blog, Strife, and Modern Diplomacy, among others.